And, thirdly, the versification of Massinger is musical and melodious. Boyle says that Milton's blank verse owes much to the study of it. “In the indefinable touches which make up the music of a verse, in the artistic distribution of pauses, and in the unerring choice and grouping of just those words which strike the ear as the perfection of harmony, there are, if we leave Cyril Tourneur's Atheist's Tragedy out of the question, only two masters in the drama, Shakspere in his latest period and Massinger.”165 Coleridge says that it is “an excellent metre, a better model for dramatists in general to imitate than Shakspere's. Read Massinger aright, and measure by time, not syllables, and no lines can be more legitimate, none in which the substitution of equipollent feet, and the modifications by emphasis, are managed with such exquisite judgment.”166 Be it noted that this praise comes from a master of his art, for no one who has once appreciated Coleridge's command of vowel-syzygy and the velvet-like texture of his blank verse can refuse him that title.

Massinger's blank verse is equal to all the emotions which the author can express and kindle. It never fails him, nor, on the other hand, does it obtrude itself unduly on the sense conveyed. Only after reading a considerable passage of our poet do we understand how much the [pg 056] versification contributes to his lifelike and dignified atmosphere.

Moreover, the metre of Massinger is admirably suited to his style. There seems a hidden but real harmony between them. Some might call his metre at times slipshod and undignified, from the fact that, except in elevated passages, the characters speak in rhythmical sentences which approximate to prose. Boyle, who declares that “Marlowe and Massinger are the two extremes of the metrical movement in the dramatists,”167 has pointed out that “Massinger's blank verse shows a larger proportion of run-on lines and double endings in harmonious union than any of his contemporaries.168 Cartwright [pg 057] and Tourneur have more run-on lines, but not so many double endings. Fletcher has more double endings, but very few run-on lines. Shakspere and Beaumont alone exhibit a somewhat similar metrical style.”169 This is interesting, because we shall see later on that Massinger was a devoted admirer and imitator of Shakspere in thought, device, and expression. It is not strange, therefore, that he should also copy his metre, or rather, develop his own on the same lines. To show how flexible and dexterous the metre of Massinger is, I will give two instances from The Bashful Lover. In the first Uberti encourages Gonzaga to persevere with the contest:

In the second Gonzaga refuses the hand of his daughter Matilda to Lorenzo:

Anyone who compares the metre of Massinger with that of Fletcher will find that our author observes far stricter [pg 059] laws than his friend. The plays of Massinger abound in lines divided between two speakers, or even three, which, nevertheless, observe the strict rule of the metre.172

The way in which Massinger's style and metre suit one another can best be illustrated by a passage or two from The Parliament of Love; the first is where Bellisant speaks about the decay of chivalry.

The second is a speech of Leonora exposing Cleremond's baseness:

The critics may differ in their estimate of Massinger's style and metre; but it is simple truth to say that they are unique in our literature, in their correctness, dignity, ease, and classical frugality.

Let us now turn to the poet's faults. It is said that his range of thought is limited, and this may be at once conceded. It might also be said that Greek tragedy is limited, and the statement is true of all our Elizabethan playwrights; yet we return to them again and again, for they have something to give us which we cannot do without. It is idle to depreciate one period of our literature [pg 061] at the expense of another. Are not the old madrigal writers limited, and Farrant and Byrd, Orlando Gibbons and Blow? and yet we enjoy them; nay, to take even Purcell himself, when we confess that the pleasure he gives us is due to the fact that he is more daring, less shackled than his generation, “so modern” as we say, are we not in the end forced to confess that he too is unmistakably limited, “bewrayed” by his quaint and stately rhythms to be one of the seventeenth century?

Our age has a wider and subtler range of psychology; to revert from “The Georgian Poets” of 1911 to Massinger is like going back from the films of a cinema palace to a tondo of Luca Signorelli. Both films and tondo have their uses. We may take a single illustration of this point from The Brothers Karamazov. The great Russian novelist, among other problems, deals in that book with the case of the young man who is in love with two women at once. That is the sort of complicated interest which we do not expect our Elizabethan writers to cope with, in as great detail as a modern writer uses. The problem occurs in The Bondman, where the heroine, Cleora, is distracted between her plighted love to Leosthenes and her warm sense of obligation to Marullo;176 it is interesting and instructive to see how simply the whole thing is touched upon, and how soon the doubt is solved by the discovery of Leosthenes' former intrigue with Statilia. May we not say, with Aristophanes, in comparing Massinger and Dostoevsky:

Then it is said that Massinger's work is not free from coarseness. The answer to this accusation may be made in more ways than one. I might with confidence reply to such critics: If you wish for real vulgarity of diction, [pg 062] read Marston; if you wish for real vulgarity of mind, read Middleton; if you wish for poisoned morals, read Ford and Tourneur; and then revise your judgment of Massinger. It is notorious that all the stage writers of the Elizabethan age are tarred with the same brush; there is much in Shakspere himself that we wish he had not written; still more is this true of Ben Jonson. In The Virgin Martyr, where we have the odious servants, Hircius and Spungius, it is generally believed that the parts of the play in which they appear are due to Dekker, not to Massinger, whose other works present nothing so disgusting. There are, at any rate, no lapses of taste in Massinger like those which we find in Fletcher; nothing like the fate of Rutilio in The Custom of the Country, or of Merione in The Queen of Corinth, or of the Father in The Captain. It must be confessed that Massinger's conception of love is apt to be earthly, physical, sensuous; there is but little in his plays about the marriage of true minds,178 too much about “Hymen's taper” and “virgin forts.” Captivated by the charms of female beauty, his intellect is too concrete in its ideals to rise above mere morality to the mysteries of the diviner love. So far it must be allowed that his art interests and stimulates the passions of his audience without elevating them. But if at times we feel a monotonous limitation in his outlook in these matters, if we miss the healthy breezes of bracing commonsense and cheerful self-restraint, we are never pained by the triumph of what is low, corrupt, or morbid.

When it is said that his women are impure it is necessary to enter a clear protest.179 There are offensive and [pg 063] heartless women in Massinger, such as Domitia in The Roman Actor, and Beaumelle in The Fatal Dowry;180 there are odious old women, like Borachia and Corisca. There are pert and vulgar ladies' maids; but you have only to read The Bondman, The Bashful Lover, A Very Woman, The Maid of Honour, The Great Duke of Florence, The Emperor of the East, The Picture, to see that his world includes some charming female characters—not, indeed, so lovely as those of Shakspere, but still, types which show that he had not lost his faith in human nature, as, when we read Fielding, we feel regretfully almost obliged to allow, in spite of Sophia Western and Amelia, is the case with our great novelist.

It is true that there are ladies in Massinger's plays who offer their hands in marriage to the men they love, and very charmingly the thing is done, though there is nothing equal to the scene between the Duchess and Antonio in Webster's masterpiece; as, for example, Artemia in The Virgin Martyr, the Duchess of Urbin in The Great Duke, Calista in The Guardian.181 This feature is not confined to Massinger among the writers of his age; to mention no other instances, what about Arethusa in Philaster, Bianca in The Fair Maid of the Inn, Beliza and the Queen in The Queen of Corinth,182 Frank in The Captain, Clara in Love's Cure (IV., 2), Martia in The Double Marriage (II., 3), Lamira in The Honest Man's Fortune (V., 3), Erota in The Laws of Candy? Or, what about Desdemona in Othello,183 or Olivia in Twelfth Night?184 What about the [pg 064] plot of All's Well that Ends Well? To the vulgar mind all things are vulgar. Honi soit qui mal y pense.185 It may certainly be conceded that in some of Massinger's plays, as, for instance, The Unnatural Combat and Believe as You List, the feminine interest is comparatively slight. Brander Matthews tells us that Massinger's women “are all painted from the outside only”;186 “they are not convincing; they lack essential womanliness.” This may be due to the fault which the same critic points out in our author, that “he is heavy-handed and coarse-fibred ethically as well as æsthetically.” One may reply that if the theatre be the mirror of life Massinger had an undoubted right to bring bad women on the stage; there are good and noble women also among his characters, and if they are not “convincing,” perhaps we may quote Coleridge's remark about Shakspere, that “he saw it was the perfection of women to be characterless.” However far our author may fall short of his great model in grace, charm, and delicacy, he at any rate deserves credit for having imagined female characters who are full of passions and made of “flesh and blood.”187

Massinger resembles other dramatists of his age; at times we feel that they talk like the little boys on the links in Stevenson's Lantern-Bearers. But Massinger is a robuster mind than Fletcher, for example; if he brings vice upon the stage, and if he speaks too freely about things which we prefer not to have mentioned, if “like Hogarth, he enjoys his own portrayal of degrading vice and its appalling consequences,”188 we must, to do him [pg 065] justice, take his work as a whole. Indeed, most of the critics have singled out as one of his special claims to praise his sturdy morality,189 and the general effect on any fair mind of a perusal of his plays is a conviction that he loved virtue. Vitelli190 may make the best of both worlds, but he converts Donusa, and faces death and torture with fortitude. Goodness emerges from Massinger's plays, sometimes compromised for the moment, but always triumphant in the end. There is considerable outspokenness, but not much lubricity, and no perverted morality. Passages which offend can nearly always, as in Shakspere, be omitted without damaging the course of the plot. Moreover, as has often been pointed out, the works of Massinger are almost wholly free from blasphemy and profanity, and attacks on the clergy, such as moved the wrath of Jeremy Collier in later times.

It may be a fanciful suggestion, but it is possible that the drama of that day suffered from the fact that boys took the female parts.191 No one would deny the artistic [pg 066] loss thereby involved, but there was a moral loss as well. It made it possible for things to be said that would not have been said by men to women, still less by women to men. It unconsciously invested the love-scenes with an air of unreality and grossness. It prevented the relation of the sexes from being depicted with that union of passion and purity which, though difficult, is possible.

It has been said that Massinger is hard and metallic, and devoid of pathos. This charge, again, is largely true. You will not find in him scenes which clutch the heart like those of Dr. Faustus, or The Duchess of Malfi, or The Broken Heart, or The Maid's Tragedy, or The Wife for a Month; you will not find the sublimity of Ordella's self-sacrifice in Thierry and Theodoret, or the chivalry of A Fair Quarrel; still less will you find anything so appalling as the end of King Lear, or Othello, or Romeo and Juliet. There is plenty of passion in Massinger; like the legendary lion, he lashes with his tail, and you can almost see him in the act; but his rhetoric does not entirely carry you away. Let me recall the fine passage which was quoted just now from The Roman Actor.192 I hope everyone will allow its eloquence; but the repetition of the commonplace phrase, “we cannot help it,”193 natural and forcible as it is, falls short of the ideal grandeur at which the passage aims. We feel that Fletcher could have made a finer thing of the prison-scene in The Emperor of the East.

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It is significant that the most tender passage in Massinger,194 where Leonora bids Almira take consolation, has been assigned by some to Fletcher. In other words, Massinger is not in the front rank of genius, but no one would claim for him such a place.

Again, one might urge that his plays are not stores of worldly wisdom, like Shakspere's; his aphorisms are not deep; they do not bite.195 Consequently he does not lend [pg 068] himself to quotation. Yet this does not of necessity detract from his greatness. No one would question the excellence of the Waverley Novels, but Leslie Stephen has pointed out that we only make one quotation from Scott's novels.196 Aristotle has told us that “excessive brilliance of diction obscures characters and sentiments.”197 There [pg 069] are few passages of high poetical emotion in Massinger; there is little magic in the rhythm of individual lines. Like most of his contemporaries he shows at times a strange insensibility to smooth rhythm in the heroic couplet. He has an anapæstic lilt in various parts of the line, inherited from Shakspere, and found in Milton's early poems, which is not ineffective in its way, and which seems to have aimed at varying the monotony of the ten-syllable line.198 He has not much power of rhyme,199 nor are his plays studded with such lyrics as Shakspere and Fletcher could write upon occasion.200

Again, the comic element in Massinger is at times dull, forced, and ordinary; it does not take us very far to label a foolish Florentine gentleman with the name of “Sylli”;201 the hungry soldier is rather a time-worn type,202 nor [pg 070] can Greedy compare with Lazarillo. Though the situations are humorous, we do not split with laughter over Massinger, as we do in reading Aristophanes, or Shakspere, or Molière.203 We do not find in him the mercurial lightness of A Trick to Catch the Old One, or the invincible absurdity of “The Roarers” in The Fair Quarrel. But it is necessary to remember that the comic business is of the kind which gains by acting, or indeed requires it, and to allow that towards the end of his life Massinger came forward as a grave and powerful satirist of contemporary men, reminding us of Ben Jonson, but, to my mind, excelling him; for he shows less asperity with greater lucidity and ease.204 He is not unduly morose or bitter, yet he wins conviction with an admirable sanity and sobriety. The plays will repay good acting, and, after all, plays are meant to be acted; it is significant that the last of Massinger's plays to hold the stage was his comedy, The New Way to pay Old Debts, and it is very much to be wished that it should be revived in England.205

Some critics have accused Massinger of redundancy in style, a characteristic which clearly will strike different people in different ways. Thus, Hallam regards this feature as on the whole meritorious, giving “fulness, or what the painters would call impasto, to his style, and if it might not always conduce to effect on the stage, suitable on the whole to the character of his composition.” Mr. Bullen,206 after an eloquent tribute to “Massinger's admirable ease and dignity,” and to “his rare command of an excellent work-a-day dramatic style, clear, vigorous, and [pg 071] free from conceit and affectation,” proceeds to allow that “he is apt to grow didactic and tax the reader's patience; and there is often a want of coherence in his sentences, which amble down the page in a series of loosely linked clauses.” I do not myself feel that this charge comes to very much.

The real fault of Massinger lies in an imperfect presentation of character. This point has been felt by many writers, and put in various ways. Coleridge bluntly says: “Massinger's characters have no character.”207 Brander Matthews puts it in another way when he observes that “the plots are not the result of the characters, but the work of the playwright,”208 a criticism we may remark in passing eminently applicable to Fletcher. It has been said that the characters are conventional, like those in the Italian or Spanish sources from which they are derived; the violent tyrant and the arrogant queen are the most familiar of these types. I do not think this statement arrives at the root of the matter. Characters may be conventional and yet interesting and lifelike. A great many of the personages in Massinger's plays, important and unimportant alike, act reasonably; he takes great pains to discriminate them, and the effect is successful and consistent. Let us recall the great characters in Massinger; they are Paris, Luke, Sir Giles Overreach, Durazzo, Marullo, Malefort, Charalois, Antiochus, Camiola, Dorothea, Donusa, Almira. In the second rank we may put Timoleon, Romont, Bertoldo, John Antonio, Mathias, Wellborn, Athenais, Marcelia, Sophia, Cleora. Of these persons, the two that I think most men would like to have known best are Paris and Camiola. Notice, by the way, that there is seldom more than one great character in a play. Now, in Henry VIII there are three, the King, Catherine, and Wolsey. The question arises whether Massinger, even with Fletcher's help, could have worked on this scale. If [pg 072] Massinger wrote Henry VIII it is certainly, with all its faults, his most remarkable achievement.

The point which I wish to emphasize is that there are many characters in Massinger drawn with care and ability. Think, for example, of the skilful contrast between Pulcheria and Athenais in The Emperor of the East, showing how easy it is for two good women to quarrel. Further, it is clear that the attempt to produce composite and developing characters is praiseworthy, even if it be not always successful, because it is more true to life than Ben Jonson's brilliant but illusory delineation of “humours.” Human beings are too complex to be labelled in this slapdash way, however amusing it may be on the stage.

And yet we must allow that a certain number of the more important characters act outrageously; the explanation being that the faults which Massinger loves to portray and censure are such as show themselves in outrageous ways—such as anger, pride, impotence in the Latin sense, uxoriousness, and above all jealousy.209 Take the case of Theophilus in The Virgin Martyr, who kills his daughters because they have been reconverted to Christianity; or of Domitian in The Roman Actor, who goes through life killing people as he would kill flies. It is not enough to say that there are such people in the world; the point is, that in Massinger they shock us without appalling us. Sforza behaves to Marcelia much as Othello behaves to Desdemona; we feel at once a difference of power in the two plays.210 Massinger has many villains, but Shakspere manages better with Richard III and Iago. Think again of the uxoriousness of Ladislas, Theodosius, Domitian, which some have held to be a covert satire on Charles I. We despise these weak and servile husbands.

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Now, is there anything we can urge in Massinger's justification? I think there is. We read his plays nowadays, we do not see them acted. We are therefore apt to forget how impressive and vigorous good acting is. The display of passion on the stage with gesture, attitude, frown, and scorn, would render more tolerable some of these scenes which offend us in the study by their crudeness. Such a part, for instance, as Leosthenes in The Bondman, the jealous and yet guilty lover, has great opportunities for the actor. It might even be urged that Massinger wrote thus because he knew the capabilities of the actors who were going to perform his plays.

The same consideration applies to a feature in Massinger which will strike every reader. He sets himself at times to represent growth, or, at any rate, change, of character. Even Shakspere seldom tries to do this,211 and it was too hard a task for his pupil. His most ambitious venture in this direction is in The Picture. In that play Mathias has a magic portrait, which shows him whether his wife is faithful to him or not in his absence; and the alternations of the mind in husband and wife alike are drawn with considerable power. Luke in The City Madam is perhaps the most skilfully drawn example of a development of character. The hypocrite is quite carried away by the riches to which he unexpectedly succeeds.212 Another successful conversion is that of Theophilus at the end of The Virgin Martyr. It is due partly to his eating the heavenly fruit, for which he had asked Dorothea at her death, partly to the effect which the [pg 074] grace and beauty of Angelo produce on his mind. The gradual growth of his new belief, in spite of all that Harpax can do, is managed with much skill, and it is in itself true to nature that the man who had been violent in one direction should ultimately be violent in another. Moreover, we are bound to remember that when people are soon persuaded, the play gets on. Indeed, I think we have in this consideration the clue to the whole matter; “the Stage Poet” had a practical mind.

Change of mood and vacillation of purpose, under the stress of temptation, or due to the conflict of contrary impulses, are features of some of Massinger's best scenes. The wavering of the love-sick Caldoro while Durazzo is abusing him is very true to life.213 The skill with which the “melancholy” Vitelli's changes of mood are depicted in The Renegado214 suggests the theory that Massinger is drawing his own portrait. The alternation of pride and humility in Honoria in The Picture215 is forcibly shown. The just anger of Sophia at the end of the same play yields skilfully to a combined intercession.

As a rule, however, the changes are too rapid. Thus, in The Maid of Honour, Aurelia, when she hears that Camiola has ransomed Bertoldo and bound him with a promise to marry her, suddenly changes her mind; she has been on the point of marrying the faithless soldier, but, as she says: